Thursday, February 26, 2015

Qatar: In the Line of American Fire.We have 10,000 US Troops Protecting this Oil-Rich Emirate! and we developed their Gas/Oil Fields. So why do we allow Qatar to fund/manage ISIS, Al Qaeda, Hamas, and many other Islamic Terrorist Groups? Are we playing games? Or are we wasting lives in a phony war on terror?

Hats off to an intrepid young journalist, Jay Solomon, the point man for Foreign Policy news at the conservative Wall Street Journal, who wrote a brilliant article along with Nour Malas, on Feb. 23, 2015 entitled: “Qatar’s Ties To Militants Strain Alliance” (posted earlier). The authors point to one simple conundrum: Americans created the little Emirate of Qatar when our behemoth oil companies—Exxon Mobil Corp. and Conoco Phillips—took the unusual risk of drilling for natural gas in that destitute entity called a ‘country’. We now base our military personnel and fly our jets to fight ISIS from Qatar. Yet, Qatar (along with Saudi Arabia) is a main financier of ISIS, Hamas, Al Qaeda and any other Sunni extremist groups. Americans are paying Qatar to kill our men and women in a so-called “existential battle to eliminate extremist terrorist groups.”

Now, either I have attended one too many Mad Hatter Lunches or something is wrong with our Foreign Policy. Please read the following sentence from the WSJ article: “They said Qatar has the right to have diplomatic ties with Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, and other Islamist movements that they said have broad support in the Arab public”.

Why not pull out of Qatar and let them do what they do best: Buy insurance from terrorist groups who promise not to kill the young Qatari Emir—just like Saudi Arabia did [and regretted it]. But here is where my B.S. meter goes crazy….“We are not bloc-mentality –belonging country. We create platforms for dialogue, said Qatar’s foreign minister Khalid bin Mohammad al-Attiyah,”If this approach allows us to bring long-lasting peace and security in our region, we will not be affected by criticism.”

If you want our troops to protect you guys, then do as we say… or we will do what we want! But then is our military at the beck and call of the oil interests?
Whats the real story behind the mysterious beginning of the narrative called , “IsIs”, “Hamas”, “Al Qaeda”, and all the Libyan Islamic Forces that former Sec State Hillary Clinton, Samantha Power [UN], and Susan Rice [NSC] created because of their incompetence in dismissing Col. Qaddafi. And now, Egypt is trying to eliminate those Islamic Terrorist in Libya while the Emir of Qatar is funding them and others.

So we create 9/11 with a little help from our friends; then we invade Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Sudan…but we can’t take out the Emir of Qatar and his puny little government which we are protecting so that we can fly missions over Iraq/Syria in order to waste more useless bombs and extend a non-war for three more years. Yeah, that’s a great story.

But why don’t we just take out the Emir and his coterie?Maybe the CIA or Military Intelligence can tell you the answer. But as far as I am concerned, we send our troops into a self-created harm’s way, then we blow them up with weapons that we left behind as in Iraq and we protect the bad guys who fund the most horrible killers whom we call ‘muslim extremists’. While we try to explain to the world the nuance of ISIS and how it represents a medieval caliphate. When in fact that caliphate was created by the USG, CIA, MI, and other willing participants.

You know that I am not a fan of the neocon warloving chicken hawks. But I have to quote the despicable Dennis Ross whom I found to be lacking in intellect and integrity:“That Qataris need to know they can’t have it both ways”, said Dennis Ross, who was Mr. Obama’s top Mideast advisor in his first term. “But so far, they see that they can.”When a bad man like Dennis Ross is criticizing a craven, desert rat like the Emir of Qatar, we know that something smells in the state of America. Let’s get rid of this problem ASAP!

America: STOP funding terrorists and maybe we don’t have to spend billions on Homeland Security- use the money for roads, schools and space. DEFUND QATAR, DEFUND HOMELAND SECURITY, a simple, elegant formula for success.

Monday, February 23, 2015

What Happens When Narcissism Gloats Exponentially and Delivers Awards to Itself for Mediocrity?

It’s Called The 87th Academy Awards… or Where did Oscar Go?

It would be fair to say that a significant number of you probably watched last night’s Academy Awards Ceremony. Since I voted for the best script, I started to watch it. As many of you know from my previous blogs, I picked two movies that I thought stood out from the rest of the films: “Whiplash” and the once ignored “American Sniper”. I am glad they won some awards. However, I could not watch the Oscar ceremony once the host, Neil Patrick Harris came out in his underpants and thought that this puerile action was funny. For the most part, I have very little respect for the actors who celebrate their narcissism on a steady diet of false adoration and expansive platitudes. No two movies were more absurd both in their creation and their execution than the front runners: “Boyhood” and “Birdman”.

As I wrote previously, “Boyhood” was a boring family saga akin to watching home movies of your most detestable family members who have nothing better to do than navel gazing. “Birdman” was another piece of cinematic farce. It was ostensibly a picture of a repulsive, faded actor played by Michael Keaton attempting a comeback. Ironically, I watched the beginning of the film when Keaton is floating in mid-air, then goes into rehearsals on a Broadway stage. The rest of the story is riddled with dialogue, drama and tension akin to free associations of one of my former lobotomized patients who had been hospitalized for a bad LSD trip. Yet, “Birdman” received numerous other awards from the Director’s, Producer’s and Screen Actor’s Guilds because it was considered a film of an unbearable length of time, shot in one take.

Now, for those you who do not know that movies are usually shot in small segments, then those segments are tethered together by a talented [in this case] or non-talented editor, “Birdman” in principle was shot without a retake or cuts. I don’t believe that narrative. More importantly, I could care less whether the film was taken from a satellite perspective or that of a cockroach [sorry Franz Kafka], both the story and the lead character, Michael Keaton were at best boring if not completely reprehensible. I have had the misfortune of meeting Michael Keaton in Bozeman, Montana. What little interaction I had with him was both unpleasant and dismissive. I found him by personality to be just what the lead in “Birdman” was: self-involved, irrelevant and paranoid.

While watching last night’s Oscar Event, I had feelings of tediousness, disgust and boredom throughout. Wasn’t this supposed to be entertainment?? I sense as the Hollywood movie industry becomes increasingly irrelevant to the world audience, the academy members have become more desperate in testing the borders of absurdity and narcissism. A host standing in his jockey shorts and making nonsensical pronouncements, followed by the Lady Gaga’s inappropriate tribute to a fifty year old film, “Sound Of Music” demonstrates that Hollywood is caught in the nostalgia, bereft of any convincing or worthy scripts that will engage the present or future generations into watching anything other than Netflix,Twitter, Amazon, You Tube, et. al.

I am writing what I suspect is the beginning of an obituary for the Hollywood Film Industry which was founded on the simple premise of entertaining the masses without resorting to ‘dick jokes’ or music that has been buried within the distorted cavities of nostalgia. I once again reaffirmed for myself that the nonsensical solipsistic palaver of the Hollywood presenters and ex-celebrities was very much akin to the nonsense that we, Americans hear on a daily basis from our present leaders in the White House; as well as, our self-adoring, dim-witted contenders for the Presidency. America, it’s time to shut off the TV.

We need some new forms of entertainment and leadership. Let’s try to assess merit and achievement over self-glorification, fictional narratives and paeans to narcissism.

I believe in the following pronouncement by the great poet, William Butler Yeats:“The best lack conviction [or taste]; while the worst are full of passionate intensity [ self-love].”

Thursday, February 19, 2015

The Ukraine/Russia Self-Defeating Conflict: Both are Economically Intermeshed to the Degree that Hurting One Seriously Damages the Other.

Time to Stop Fighting and Start Making Money in Both Countries!

Let’s get the Interested EU, East European countries and the USA involved in a constructive economic program for both countries. This way everyone wins.

And just for the record: No statement could be more false than the one that Russia has changed the borders of the Ukraine by annexing Crimea. As I have pointed out almost a year ago, Russia has had both a historical imperative to the warm waters of the Crimea for which it had fought a major war in the late 19th Century, losing millions of civilians and soldiers in that process. Furthermore, Russia had been promised when the Soviet Union was dismantled-- through side agreements and verbal assurances –that Crimea was and will continue to be part of the Russian sphere of influence. Despite those assurances, America and its NATO allies entered into costly economic/kinetic war that really resolved very little in terms of territorial hegemony. More importantly, this economic warfare which we successfully implemented has come to point where it is now becoming self-destructive both to Russia and to the Ukraine.

The reason is really quite simple.

Russia and the Ukraine are so economically intertwined that by trying to hurt one bank in Russia, we in the west, are really damaging a corresponding bank in the Ukraine. Witness the fact that Foreign Direct Investments [FDI] from Cyprus [Russian Banking Cut-Out Country] fell from 33% to 29% in Ukraine 2013 to 2014. [Stratfor, 2/18/2015]. Similarly, Russia and the Ukraine are one major oil/gas terminal made up of interlacing pipelines; wherein both Roseneft and Lukoil [both Russian firms] sold off 240 filling stations in the Ukraine to an Austrian Company AMIC Energy Management.

This worldwide accepted narrative that Russia has pre-empted western attempts by Kiev to enter the EU is not completely true nor enlightening. That narrative as usual serves the more bellicose desires of those strategic neophytes who pontificate about antiquated geopolitical spheres of influence which now have evaporated into a vapor cloud of computing. These are now amorphous Cyber-Nations, funded by binary numbers consisting of ones and zeros.

So what is to be done?

It imperative for the USA to initiate, along with its French/German/ Austrian and Chinese partners, a financial packet which will address both the monetary requirements for economic rehabilitation in both of the twin countries of Ukraine and Russia. This is a unique opportunity for the leading financial Eastern and Western Superpowers in partnership with their respective private financial conglomerates to create a new menu of finance products/partnerships. These should appeal to the youth of both nations so that they might start respective hi-tech and manufacturing incubators that can act as models of economic entrepreneurship in the 21st Century. Why not reconfigure an impending disaster into a hopeful opportunity for peace and prosperity?

The Ukraine and Russians must remember that they have far more in common than they have differences. Kinetic military actions will have to become subservient to the economic imperatives of MUTUAL DEPENDENCY! Otherwise, what will hurt one will also hurt the other. Cut off one limb in Russia and you may be unwittingly amputating two separate limbs in the Ukraine.

This time let us think out-of-the-box! Where are the Silicon Valley Boys? Its time to grow up and influence developing economies in a positive way.Let me reiterate an interesting thought by Ralph Waldo Emerson:“Whosoever would be man must be a conformist.”Or, in the words of the great economist, Adam Smith:

Monday, February 16, 2015

Never have the psychological dynamics of each key player been more important to world peace in the 21st century.

On February 15, the world saw what two strong personalities from seemingly two disparate cultures will do with respect to the crucial world issues of peace, war, EU disintegration and other ancillary untoward consequences.

What do I mean?

It is very rare for me with my history to witness such a confluent of worldwide issues being concentrated in one truncated place and time. The recent Minsk Accords facilitated by Lukashenko [Belarus] was a last minute attempt to bring a moment of respite to an escalating situation of confrontation between the USA and Russia. Not since the Cold War have we seen such a mounting sense of tension. Some pundits in the USA want to compare the Russia-USA confrontation in the Ukraine to the Cuban Missile Crisis during the Kennedy era. I don’t think its similar at all because that past incident occurred between two different types of personalities.

JFK was correctly assessed by the ruthless, murderous Khruschev as weak and indecisive. One must remember as I have written before in other blogs that JFK was a mental/physical cripple who was completely addicted to 19 different medications which were intended to maintain his level of acumen. Despite such pharma regimens, he had psychotic breaks when he was hospitalized at New York Hospital for Addison’s Disease [absence of Adrenal Glands]. On the other side of the negotiations table was a ruthless mujik who had obtained his imprimatur as a ruthless Soviet Stalinist who had already killed over three million Kulaks [private Ukrainian farmers who had refused to be nationalized] in over nine months in 1933. So, we had the medical/psychological “wimp” and the killer, despite the nonsense propaganda pablum produced by Harvard’s Ted Sorenson about Camelot and it’s charismatic, determined leader, JFK.

Today, we have Putin, a tough ex-KGB operative who had been trained in East Germany under the auspices of Markus Wolf [Spy Who Came in From the Cold]. Similarly, Merkel as we have described before, was raised as the daughter of a West German Lutheran Minister who went to East Germany to counteract the effects of Communism which eventually led to the Berlin Wall being taken down. Merkel grew up to become a strong politician and intellectual, she received her PhD in Physics. So for the moment, I am positing the fact that we have two different personalities from the two aforementioned politicians of the 1960’s.

Now in the shadows of conflict lies an American President who most people think is quite weak and indecisive based on past actions; particularly the refusal to enforce the red lines in Syria and the botched Libya experiment. I agree that both manifestations are of ineptness and naivete. However, I am convinced that POTUS, a product of American Intelligence, has learned his lessons with the use of force and the willingness to be tough, irrespective of the consequences [witness the massive Drone Wars in the Middle East]. Therefore, what we have is an indeterminate respite of peace for as long as it will last.

Putin will continue to test the limits of his self-designated geographical prerogatives. That’s his personality. He can brook no limits imposed from the outside or even within his own coterie of Kremlin advisors. As evidence, we see his transporting over fifty tanks into Eastern Ukraine hours before the cease fire. Yet, Putin sat for 17 hours in what appeared to be a serious attempt to negotiate a treaty in Minsk. However, if one looks carefully at the photos of the roundtable interactions, one will see that Putin has always kept one eye on Merkel as she, in turn, has kept her eyes on Putin. If Putin breaks the Minsk accord, the newly appointed David Cohen, Deputy Director of the CIA [first Jew to be in such a senior position in a very anti-Semitic intelligence organization] will increase the economic strangle-hold on the Russian economy, dropping the Ruble to the point that it will not be worth the paper it is printed on. In turn, Germany will increase their economic sanctions of Russia which may become more painful than what the US can do. Germany may start to rearm it’s forces and once again we will witness the rise of what was once a formidable fighting force.

At the same time, Merkel will have to deal with Greece’s economic woes that in my humble opinion are beyond repairing. She will try to keep Greece in the EU in order to make certain that Greece cannot write off the billions of dollars in debt that it owes to German, Austrian and Italian banks. All types of EU committees, like one called ‘cohesian’ will desperately try to salvage Greece. Even the World Bank subsidiary the International Monetary Fund [IMF—a pathetic cover for American donations] will try to loan Greece money.

This is the week that will be and then eventually become the week that was. What will happen is not everyone’s guess. It will reside with one major factor which we Americans really do not teach nor prepare for –the psychological/political dynamics of two very powerful personalities--- Merkel and Putin. If we learn nothing more from what will transpire, I will lobby for a unit of the White House that President Eisenhower had once instituted –Unit For Psychological/Political Behavior. America must anticipate behavior of world leaders rather than simply react to it. Its called strategy.

Saturday, February 14, 2015

Congratulations to the New Attorney General Loretta Lynch, First African-American Woman to be Nominated to that Office!Don’t Become an Eric Holder—Newtown False Flag/Gun Control Fiasco/ Civil Rights Wannabe “Agitator”!

Loretta is black, female, southern-born [Durham, North Carolina]; Harvard Undergraduate and JD. More importantly, she was the Sorority Sister of Eric Holder’s politically powerful OB-Gyn, beautiful wife – Dr. Sharon Malone, M.D.- and a dedicated U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York. It looks as if political cronyism and racial affinity has played a crucial role in the nomination of our new U.S Attorney General. Even more cynical than her historical proximity to Eric Holder’s wife, is that Ms Lynch is tainted by the fact of her seeming superficial similarities to the Michelle/Jarret/ Malone Mafia -- all of an elite group African-American Women who tolerate nothing except a limited agenda of power to implement gun control and racial/economic equality. However, I have this slight inkling that there is something very different about this petite impish force, Loretta Lynch.

I believe she will be different in her future performance as strict legal interpreter of the Federal Laws and that she will not pull an absurd, disgraceful, national scam like the “Newtown Stand Down,” Gun Control Fiasco.

Here’s why…

Lynch was born in Greensboro, North Carolina on May 21, 1959, she is truly American. Her mother was a school librarian; and her father was a Baptist Minister who helped persecuted blacks to flee the Jim Crow laws of the south [Wikipedia]. Now to many of you that may not be very significant. Yet to me, who grew up in Harlem, I was well acquainted with the Baptist Ministers, like Adam Clayton Powell; who despite his political chicanery, was a charismatic, serious spokesman for the poor blacks in NYC. Those African Americans who grew up with privilege and education, like the medical doctor, Dr. Arthur Logan [Director of the Health Insurance Group-HIP, my father was a partner] and his lovely sister, were in the forefront of civil rights, way before the Selma Marches; or Martin Luther King’s historic speeches. These elite professionals began the quiet rumblings of an American Revolution called, “Civil Rights”; which LBJ had implemented into official legislation.

For me, Loretta Lynch’s background of growing up in the 1960s in the South allowed her to understand the intricate complexities that were involved in segregation. This history of real confrontation with segregation will have an impact on her future actions as a pragmatic American jurisprudence professional. She is the true American daughter of the real civil rights war; not just a participant/observer like the token Republican black, Condi Rice who never smelled the stringent odor of tear gas.

In contrast, neither Obama’s and Holder’s light brush of discrimination; giving them both a slightly tainted feelings of injustice; allowing them to complain about ‘injustices’ when they both voraciously consumed the benefits of “Affirmative Action”; which eventually propelled them into their lofty respective positions. It is important to understand that unlike their respective wives, neither man was really “An American’-- in the sense of growth or acculturation. Both men were wrapped in the white man’s guilty blanket of entitlements:

[1] Obama went to pre-paid private schools, fostered and nurtured by the CIA.

[2] Holder was of Bahamian Mulatto roots; ascending to academic excellence through elite high schools and colleges. He was a protégé of the Clinton machinery.

The simple fact is that Sharon Malone, the sister of a well-known civil rights leader, Vivian Malone-Jones [one of two students who enrolled in all white University of Alabama] should have been a political force in her own right. Instead she had decided assume the role of a female Talleyrand who stood back in the shadows of power, manipulating Obama, Holder, and Lynch from Washington DC to the black-dominated summer homes in Oak Bluffs, Cape Cod, Mass. For whatever reasons, she had decided to become one of the last medical heroines: an Ob-Gyn doctor with twenty-five years of liability attached to every delivery.

Such black women of power and brains could not step forward until now. Loretta has the chance to demonstrate what justice really means to all American because, unlike Holder, she really worked in the cesspool of black/white crimes; political chicanery; and banking malfeasance [indicted Citibank and UBS for corrupt practices]. Let me tell you that when you have to oversee prosecution of felons in Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island and Long Island, you have seen the gamut of crimes from petty theft to construction fraud of the highest order.

I would like to wish the new Attorney General Loretta Lynch the best of luck. I don’t care how she got to that position. I only ask that she would act like her mother and father—honestly, courageously and fair. This country can’t afford any more Eric Holders. Let ‘the Duck’ [Holder] go back into the swamp waters and waddle away from our American shores of decency, transparency, effectiveness and an a complete absence of ‘False Flags’.

BTW, if you want to hear the most compelling, rational discussion on race and police relations, then tune into the new FBI Director James Comey’s recent speech on that topic. What a breath of Fresh Air!

For most of you, the notion that a bank with the significant initials like HSBC might be corrupt is not a new revelation. It is simply a reaffirmation of what all of us have suspected for a very long time. So what difference does this investigation make today vs. any day? Here may lie the answer in this excerpt from Bloomberg Business, Feb.9, 2015, by Robert Hutton:

“The report that HSBC’s private-banking unit made significant profits handling secret accounts for drug cartels, arms dealers, tax evaders and fugitive diamond merchants outraged the British lawmakers, and forced Prime Minister David Cameron to defend his 2011 appointment of the bank’s former chairman, STEPHEN GREEN as a TRADE MINISTER”.

Please remember that our own distinguished ex-Attorney General Eric “False Flag” Holder thought that HSBC was “TOO LARGE TOO FAIL”… He was wrong as usual. However, the British have in their own disingenuous way suddenly discovered that a whale of a bank named HSBC denoting the following territories of business: H-Hong Kong; S-Shanghai; B-Beijing; C-China is really….. CORRUPT!

This revelation is more ludicrous than one might realize, given the fact that the former Tory [Republican] Chancellor of the Exchequer [Secretary of the Treasury], Nigel Lawson pronounced the following revelation that only an Englishman and Mad Dogs could ever state: “I can’t believe that Stephen Green, who amongst other things is an ordained church of England Priest, could possibly have known what was going on.”

I write this blog to illustrate once again how incredibly corrupt our large banks are, no matter where they are based—be it Citigroup; JP Morgan Chase; Bank Of America…. They all have serious defects in their structure which will lead eventually to self-destruction. These entities have rapacious appetite to fund their own purses with imaginary or illicit gains. That is the basic recipe for becoming antiquated in the 21st century when PayPay or other internet financial instruments [Bitcoins ] will eventually evolve into the new currency of worldwide transaction, absent buildings, useless tellers and managers, and charging the customer for placing his/her money in a particular bank. In my experience, no bank has had more problems on a retail level then the newly reconstructed Canadian entity entitled TD Bank, a testimony to human frailty and incompetence.

Yet I point the accusatory finger at England, once again. England has hidden in the groves of antiquity and irrelevancy for almost half a century when America became the major Superpower after WWII. However, be it Tony Blair or David Cameron, these inept Prime Ministers have always had their hands stretched out for pecuniary reasons toward America or the Far East.

In the case of Tony Blair, literally a war criminal, his collusion with our President Bush Jr/Cheney to doctor all types of intelligence in order to create an unnecessary war in both Iraq and Afghanistan [both British creations] cost our country billions with millions going straight into Blair’s pockets. As for David Cameron, here we see another aspect of a spectrum of corruption couched in the shibboleth that HSBC was “too big to control”.

Nonsense!I know that between UBS, a Swiss Bank and HSBC, a certain individual female senior executive was shuttled from one bank to the other for the sole purpose of enticing American customers and other wealthy individuals with the false, but promising notion, that ‘one could avoid paying a country’s taxes’. No country in the world has been more cowardly toward morality and the sense of justice than the Confederation of Cantons, called per chance , “Switzerland”. No other country has declared the ersatz title of ‘neutrality’ during all the major European Wars in order to extract maximum profits from the victors and vanquished, all at the same time. It was in Zug, Switzerland that the greatest US commodity swindler Philbro/Mark Rich [defended by Eric Holder and pardoned by Clinton] sought eventual refuge from US Federal Prosecution.

Once again, we are witnessed to a charade of British justice as we see what Prime Minister David Cameron will eventually do about his transparent appointment of an de facto corrupt Minster of Trade, Stephen Green, the Anglican Vicar of Embezzlement and Extortion. I am not going to hold my breath. Everything the British have created in the Post WWI period in the Middle East has turned into a turgid conflagration of religion, extremism, ethnic diversity---all hidden within the initials of a C.O.U.N.T.R.Y.

That’s right! They the Brits hid their past miscreant exploitative behavior in terms of a word that would evoke a sense of nationalism and patriotism –the notion of a country –when in fact there was no country that could exist from it’s very inception.

Witness the creation by MI-6’s desert warrior, Ms Gertrude Bell, who by force, intimidation and sheer will power took Kurdish Tikrit; melded it with Sunni Baghdad; and then, folded the two together along with Shi’ite Basra into a central oil dispensary called: IRAQ!

So whether the entity is called Jordan, Saudi Arabia or Syria or whether one has HSBC--- we, the public understand all too well that money, corruption and chicanery will always be involved. Those generations who are to follow us are doomed to unravel the mess that we have created intentionally with all the rationalizations that absolve us from accountability, morality or guilt.

Long Live the Thorny Crown of Iniquity!May it last…. Until its eventual demise!

And may “disingenuous behavior” keep serving us well into the future of oblivion and amnesia!

Monday, February 9, 2015

President Aleksandr Lukashenko, President of Belarus, Once a Thug Acting Solely on Behalf of Russia, has Turned into an Effective Conciliatory Statesman!

On February 11, the EU countries which are directly involved in the conflict with Russia over the Ukraine, along with the USA and NATO representatives, will meet in Minsk, the capital of Belarus under the diplomatic aegis of Belarus President Aleksandr Lukashenko.

Now, this Belarus President has a certain meaning in my personal life. About a decade ago, I was on a train from Moscow to Poland. When we arrived at the Brest-Litovsk station in order to change our rail gauges, I was confronted with an array of Belarussian security guards pointing an assortment of weapons at me, including the infamous AK-47 rifles. A melee of discussions, accusations and pushing ensued. Result: I was thrown off the train for presumably not having had a transit paper to go through Belarus. The reality, of course, was a little different. The fact that I spoke Russian to some of the guards, carried an American passport and was on my way to my ancestral homeland, Poland, coagulated into a clot-like impediment to proceed the remaining thousand yards into Poland.

When I returned back to Moscow, I reamed my KGB operatives, disguised as travel agents for having ‘inadvertently forgotten’ to give me a transit paper through Belarus. I did not go to the US Embassy in either Minsk or Moscow. I found that the hotel services of the Marriott corporation were far more efficient and effective than the US Embassy Representatives [hint: get rid of our useless US Embassies]. In any case, I eventually returned to Poland soon after, using a direct flight from Chicago to Poland.

Yet I simmered for years, cursing under my breath both Lukashenko and Belarus. However, something happened to me and Aleksandr. Over time, I noticed that Aleksandr had started to act in a more reasonable, less totalitarian way toward his own lovely people [extremely helpful when I was thrown off the train]; as well as very statesman-like toward the Ukraine problem.

There were times that Lukashenko, by geopolitical proximity to Russia, had to support Putin in some of his more rash moments of action. In particular, Aleksandr initially sided with Putin when Putin decided to invade the Crimea under false pretexts. Then over a period of time, Aleksandr correctly perceived that unadulterated affiliation with Russia was both harmful to his country, Europe and Russia, itself.

In a very mature and statesmanship like initiative, he offered to broker the dispute between the US/NATO/EU interests vs Russia/Putin’s geopolitical spheres of influence. I don’t know what the outcome will be of this forthcoming meeting. I would hope that Merkel of Germany [East Germany] and Aleksandr [ Former Communist Official] can convince the ex-KGB agent, trained in East Germany that times have changed. Spheres of influence, created by the nonsensical neocon and faux geopolitical strategists wherever they may be ensconced [usually in some type of govt funded think-tank] are completely irrelevant in a world of economic/psychological warfare; climate wars; and interdependency of fiscal/political interests; and most importantly, Cyber wars and cyber-attacks.

The world has changed. Putin has not come to that realization yet. Russia is a great country with large amounts of natural and human resources that need a new type of bright Russian youth to take over the Kremlin and redirect Mother Russia toward a greater destiny than old regrets and antiquated geopolitical mandates. Maybe in the new Russia, there is a young man who can arise and become the new Peter The Great and take Russia back into the world full of economic growth and progressive development. Or better yet, a young Russian woman of Prussian descent can arise to become the new Catherine the Great.

Anything is possible in this newly changing world where a wrestler can become a leader of a country and then eventually evolve into an effective world statesman, like Belarusian President, Aleksandr Lukashenko.

Thursday, February 5, 2015

Brazil in Danger of Severe Drought!Sao Paulo, Rio De Janeiro and Minas Gerais –All have Major Water Shortage Problems w/ over 30 Million People Affected!

Twenty years ago, I wrote a novel about the impending Second Civil War in the USA over a shortage of water in the Southwest. The book delineated the strife among California, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, Arizona over the decreasing amount of water available in the Colorado River. What I thought would happen in the USA in time has actually become a reality in Sao Paolo, the business capital of Brazil.

Now, Brazil is a country about the size of the USA and has the largest water basin in the world around the Amazon River. So how did this country of natural bounties and a massive supply of water end up in a state of near drought? Many reasons are given. Most of the shortage is blamed on a corrupt government which was too busy plundering the country of its natural resources and selling them overseas. I would not disagree with that assessment as only part of the answer.

You see the present President, an ex-terrorist and a clone of her inept socialist boss, has no executive abilities that would in any way suggest that she understood how to run a large resource-rich country. Then there is the usual explanation that petrochemical and other industries have used so much water that there was very little left for the citizenry.

That is also partly true.

What no one, including the Brazilian Government, has discussed at all is that animal husbandry in the AMAZON has deforested that water rich area. I am not a hydrologist, but I do know a little bit about water resources. The single most devastating cause of drought anywhere around the world is animal husbandry. Yes, think for a minute that every time you eat a Hamburger you in effect consume about 660 gallons of water.

Am I delusional?

I had the good fortune to see an independent movie entitled “COWSPIRACY” by Kip Andersen and Keegan Kuhn

It was not a simple propaganda film. Trust me, I don’t watch that stuff. The film showed how we Americans and others citizens around the world will be eventually depleted of water in the next decade because of the massive requirements for water when a farmer raises the necessary nutrients [grains, feed] as well the cows, pigs, chickens etc. to be consumed per day to maintain our current diet.

▪Animal agriculture is responsible for 18 percent of Greenhouse Emissions; more than all transportation combined.

▪Methane has produced global warming 86 Times that of CO2.

▪Fracking water use ranges from 70-140 billion gallon annually. In comparison Livestock is responsible for 65% of all emissions of Nitrous oxide- A Greenhouse gas 296X more destructive than CO2 and stays in the atmosphere for 150 years.

▪Growing feed crops for livestock consumes 56% of water in the USA.

▪2,500 Gallons of water are needed to produce 1 POUND OF BEEF!!

▪An average American consumes 209 pounds of meat per year.

You get the idea, the fork should dominates the knife. Vegetarian diets minimize the aforementioned disasters. However, I am not going to proselytize you.

I am here to answer one simple question:Why did Sao Paulo become water starved when the leaders of Brazil have known for many years that they would inevitably have major water shortages if they continue on their current path? For decades, the beef and farming industry in Brazil has been so powerful that they have literally killed anyone that might interfere with their continuous destruction of the rich Amazon Rain Forest for the purpose of animal husbandry. An American Nun who had tried warn the world about the impending doom of the Amazon Rain forest was killed by the Brazilian meat industry.If we continue to eat meat at our current rate; and we continue to destroy our oceans for fishing and our lands for animal husbandry---we too can become like BRAZIL!

without water. Just to make the point a little bit more poignant. Several years ago, a group of people who had no water migrated to a city and overloaded the capacity of that city until each person was fighting the other for space and resources.

What am I talking about?The Civil War in Syria was about water. The Sunnis from Homs and Hama verses the Alawites [Bashar Assad] who had controlled Damascus and the Syrian coastline where water and food resources were plentiful. The water war turned into a religious war!

Climate Wars will constitute the next major outbreaks in our continuous, addictive, worldwide self-destructive behaviors towards one another. I hope that I am wrong but the recent water crisis in Brazil might be an indication that I am right.

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About Me

Dr. Steve Pieczenik is a critically acclaimed author of psycho-political thrillers and the co-creator of the New York Times best-selling "Tom Clancy's Op-Center" and "Tom Clancy's Net Force" book series. He is also one of the world's most experienced international crisis managers and hostage negotiators. His novels are based on his twenty years experience in resolving international crises for five U.S. administrations.